Gasp Page 5

  “Jason,” she said.

  I stared down at the shirt in my hand. “Look, it was only an idea.”

  “I’m not… against it,” she said. “Not entirely. It just seems stupid to me, because… what’s the point? I mean, we’re together. And we’ve been together for a long time. And being married isn’t going to make it any different. It’s not going to make us love each other more. Having a wedding would only be stressful. Besides, we live with everyone we know, so who would we even invite?”

  “Well, maybe it’s not about being married, exactly, then. It’s only that it might be nice not to live with so many people. Maybe if we got our own place or something.”

  She furrowed her brow. “But this is my house. My grandmother left it to me. So if we move out, and let everyone else stay here… that seems silly.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “You want to be away from Jude, don’t you?”

  “I want to be near you,” I said. “It’s not about being away from anyone.”

  “I kind of want to be away from him too.” She chewed on her lip. “But he stays at headquarters most of the time, anyway, so…” She took a deep breath. “You think if we got him a prostitute or something, then he’d… change? Or maybe if he got laid some other way. He needs a girlfriend.”

  I winced at the mention of prostitutes, thinking about Claire begging me to stop hurting her. I massaged the bridge of my nose. “I don’t want to talk about Jude, okay?”

  “Okay.” She went over to the dresser and started pulling her hair back into a ponytail. “If we moved out on our own, it would only make things more complicated, don’t you think?”

  “What things?”

  “Well, Chance for instance. I mean, would you drive back here every day to wake him up for school?”

  “Actually, I would want him to come with us.”

  She turned to me, tying her hair back. “Jason, we can’t do that to Mina.”

  “No, I guess not,” I said. “But maybe we could do some kind of joint thing. He could be with us every other week or something.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think that would be as good for him as having a stable home, babe.”

  Maybe she was right. I sighed. “Forget it. Let’s get breakfast.”

  She looked down at her nightgown. “Do you want to go out, or just put something together in the kitchen?”

  “I don’t care. We can go out.”

  “Let me get dressed then.”

  I sat down on the bed. “We’re going to have this same problem with Jude, aren’t we? He’s going to want to see the baby.”

  Azazel paused, midway into pulling her nightgown off. “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

  I looked down at my hands. “It’s only that you and I are never going to be able to have a relationship on our own. It won’t be you and me and a couple kids. Because… it’s all complicated.”

  “I know,” she said softly.

  I looked up at her.

  She turned away and began pulling clothes out of her dresser. I watched her take her nightgown off and put on underwear and a bra. She stepped into a pair of pants. “But that’s not my fault, you know?”

  “I’m not blaming you.”

  “Look, this all started with you. I mean, you had a baby with another woman, and I’ve been dealing with that for the past seven years. I know it’s not easy, Jason, but we can’t change things.”

  “Well, Polly’s gone,” I said. “You’re the one who brought Mina into it. You gave my son to her, like some sort of consolation prize. ‘Here, your baby died, so have Jason’s.’”

  She tugged a shirt over her head. “That’s not fair, Jason, and you know it.”

  I sighed. “No, I know.”

  She came and sat down next to me. She took my hand. “You left me with Chance. You disappeared for years. And he wasn’t safe. I did what I could to keep him safe.”

  “Yeah, I left him with you,” I said. “I thought that you would take care of him.”

  She looked away.

  “Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t entirely about keeping him safe. If you resent him or something.”

  “Resent him?” She sounded hurt. “Jason, he’s a little boy. How could I resent—”

  “He looks so much like Polly.”

  She got up off the bed. “I thought you didn’t want to fight anymore.”

  I licked my lips. “I’m not trying to start a fight.”

  She walked back to the dresser and took her ponytail out. She started all over again, pulling her hair back. “You know, Jason, it’s not Polly that bothers me. It’s the fact that I’m supposedly the love of your life, but that every time you get a chance to have sex with someone who’s not me, you pick someone who looks like Lilith.”

  I winced. I’d brought this on myself, hadn’t I? I’d taken us down this road, and now she was going there.

  She was still busy with her hair. “I still don’t know what happened between the two of you in Florida.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She whirled. “I heard her say that she needed to ‘show you’ something. And you have never told me what it was.”

  I spread my hands. “Yes, I have. She started taking off her clothes. I stopped her.”

  “Did you?” Her face was stone.

  I got up. “Lilith is dead, Azazel. She’s been dead for a very long time. You killed her yourself. So, I don’t really see the point in talking about her at all.”

  She turned back to the mirror. “Did you have sex with Lilith?”

  I couldn’t believe she’d asked me that. That was ludicrous. “Of course not. Why would you say something like that?”

  “Maybe you should have.”

  “What?”

  She looked askance at me. “Well, because you obviously wish you did. I mean, you’ve been spending your whole life having sex with Lilith lookalikes. You had a harem full of Liliths in Jasontown.”

  “I did not have a harem of Liliths.”

  “You did. And you beat them up.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Please drop this, Azazel. That was so long ago, and I was really screwed up back then. I was out of my head.”

  “You know, you’re out of your head a lot, aren’t you?”

  I sighed. “If you want to have breakfast with me, there needs to be a subject change now.”

  Her jaw dropped open. “An ultimatum, Jason? Really?”

  I was feeling keyed up. My voice dropped several octaves. “I don’t want to talk about Lilith. I don’t want to talk about redheads. I don’t want to talk about any of that. You’re only bringing it up because you’re insecure, and you have no reason—”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not about insecurity.”

  “What does it matter, then? It’s the past.”

  “It just… it worries me is all, I guess.”

  “It was years and years ago. It’s nothing to worry about.” Of course, I was lying to her, wasn’t I? I did have some deep-seated crap going on in my head that had something to do with Lilith and something to do with redheads, and… fuck.

  She chewed on her lip. “Okay. Fine. I’ll drop it.” She looked at herself in the mirror again. “Hell, I’m not sure half the time if it’s not hormones making me crazy. Do you think my hair looks terrible?”

  “Your hair is fine.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, pulling the ponytail out again. “Let me try pulling it back again.”

  * * *

  ~azazel~

  “I wanted to ask a question, actually,” I said to the doctor. I was lying on an examining table in one of Imri’s doctor’s offices. I’d come alone. It was a long drive down here, and Jason had stuff to do with Chance. Of course, he hadn’t offered to come either. For all his big talk about both of us loving this baby, I got the impression that he was still a little leery of it. It hurt, but I was hoping he’d come around, like Marlena had said.

  “Sure,” he sai
d.

  “Um, about drinking immortal blood? I used to need to drink it, but I don’t need to anymore, obviously. Do you think that if I did, it would hurt the baby, like arrest its aging or something?”

  The doctor pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Well, from what we know about the baby, it seems to be carrying immortal blood, so that doesn’t seem likely. But if I’d be wary of your trying to drink blood. What if it aged your body back to a period of time when you wasn’t equipped to carry the baby? In essence, the baby stayed three months old, but your body only acted as if it were two months pregnant? It could cause complications.”

  “I figured,” I said.

  “Well, you’re heading into the second trimester,” he said, “and most women seem to think this is the best part of pregnancy. Morning sickness often subsides, and you’ll be less tired.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. I ran my hands over my belly. “Am I going to look more pregnant soon?”

  He laughed. “You want to look more pregnant?”

  I shrugged.

  “Weight gain is generally a bit upsetting for most women.”

  “I guess maybe it would feel more… real or something.” In my fantasies about being pregnant, the whole nine months had been blissful, Jason and I both excitedly watching all the changes in my body, the two of us talking about names and the future and being happy together. I’d definitely already put on weight—half of it seemed to be in my boobs—but I looked like a chubby woman with a little bit of a belly. I didn’t look… pregnant.

  “It’s your first pregnancy,” he said. “You may not get a noticeable belly until a little later, and it could be less pronounced depending on the orientation of your uterus, but yes, you will start showing soon.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Ah,” said the doctor. “That would be the results of the tests from when I drew blood earlier.”

  The doctor said we wanted to monitor the development of the baby pretty closely, considering it was such an anomaly. Dead women like me usually couldn’t get pregnant, and the fact that this baby had hung on so well meant that it was special.

  He went to the door and took a few printouts from a nurse there. Squinting at the papers, he wandered back over to me.

  “What?” I said. “What’s it say?”

  The doctor cocked his head, his brow furrowing.

  “Is it bad?” I said.

  He cleared his throat and looked up at me. “Uh, no, nothing to be worried about.”

  “So, what’s it say?”

  “That everything is, uh, normal.”

  I didn’t believe him. There was something about the way his glance darted away from mine. He was hiding something. I sat up. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Nothing, Ms. Jones, I promise. You’re a little paranoid. It’s typical for pregnant mothers. I do think it might be a good idea if I had you come back in two weeks instead of at eighteen weeks like we’d originally planned, but not because anything’s wrong. Just because this is a special baby, and I’d like to keep my eye on it.”

  I gulped. “There’s something wrong with it, isn’t there?”

  “No, I told you, there’s—”

  “What is it?” I said. “It’s an evil baby, isn’t it? Can you test for evil?”

  The doctor chuckled. “Ms. Jones, please. You’re worried about nothing.”

  * * *

  ~jason~

  I pulled the car over to the curb and rolled down my window.

  The girl peered inside. Her red hair was short and curly, and it made ringlets around her ears. She had freckles spattered on her nose. She gave me what she probably thought was a sexy smile. Thing was, she looked so young that it hardly worked. “Hey. You looking to party?”

  “Is that your natural hair color?” I asked.

  She giggled. “You like gingers, huh? Yeah, it’s natural. And in case you’re curious, the drapes do match.”

  I looked her over. She was tiny. Rail thin, barely any breasts to speak of.

  I usually liked them to look a little older, a little more… sensual.

  Not because I wanted to fuck them or anything.

  It was a type I was looking for.

  Hell. Okay. I was looking for girls who looked like Lilith. If I admitted it to myself, did it make anything better?

  “How old are you?” I asked her.

  “How old do you want me to be?”

  I smirked. Right. Like she was going to tell me the truth.

  “Look, are you interested or not?” she said.

  What the hell. She’d do. I hadn’t been out trolling in a while. The stuff with Azazel and the baby and Jude had distracted me. I was feeling a pretty big itch, and I needed to scratch it. “You want to go for a ride?”

  She winked at me and sauntered around the car to get in the passenger’s side.

  I let my gaze travel over her body as she buckled herself in. All her white, white skin.

  I thought how nice the contrast was going to be, her red blood against that skin.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Trixie.”

  “Hi, Trixie,” I said, pulling out my syringe. “Time for a nap, okay?”

  Her eyes got wide, and she grabbed for the door handle.

  I moved faster than she did.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ~azazel~

  I was carrying a box full of my stuff out of my apartment in headquarters. I’d been serious about moving stuff out into a different apartment. I didn’t like being in that other room. It made me think about what had happened with Jude, and it wasn’t my fondest memory.

  I struggled to close the door behind me, but I couldn’t get it, so I left it open.

  “Zaza, what are you doing?”

  I turned in the direction of the voice.

  It was Jude. He took the box out of my arms. “Should you be, you know, carrying heavy stuff?”

  “It’s not heavy. It’s clothes.” I reached for the box again.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll carry it. Just tell me where you want it to go.”

  “I can do it, Jude. It’s fine.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I got the box. Where you taking it?”

  I pointed down the hall at another open door. “I’m moving to a different apartment.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “How come?”

  I twisted my hands together. “Because… well, memories and stuff.”

  His jaw twitched. “Right.” He started down the hall.

  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to follow him or not. I didn’t like being… close to him. It made me feel sort of claustrophobic and out of control.

  “You want me to just set it anywhere in here?” he threw over his shoulder.

  I went after him. “Um, take it to the bedroom, I guess.”

  He went into the apartment, and I went in behind him.

  He disappeared into the bedroom. When he came back, he didn’t have the box. “I put it on the bed.”

  “That’s fine.”

  We looked at each other across the room.

  He scratched the back of his head. “Uh, if you have more stuff, I can help you move it.”

  I shook my head. “It’s okay.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t, you know, hurt yourself trying to bend over and carry things. It can be hard on your back even if you aren’t pregnant.”

  “Jason said he was going to come and help,” I said. “He’s just running late.” He hadn’t come home the night before, at least not to our bed in the house. But he’d texted me to say that he was doing stuff for Imri, and that he’d be here to help me this morning. I hoped he hadn’t forgotten.

  “Okay.” Jude nodded. “Well, would you mind waiting for him?”

  I looked down at my hands.

  “I think you should be careful is all,” he said.

  “I’m not an invalid.”

  “I know. I’m not saying you are.” He let out a shaky breath. �
�I guess I should go.”

  The thing was, I kind of liked the fact that Jude was worried about me. Jason didn’t seem to be showing the slightest bit of concern, and it was nice to have someone try to take care of me. Or to care about my wellbeing. The baby’s wellbeing.

  But Jude made me sick. I didn’t want it to be him.

  Jude paused in the doorway. “Hey, um, Grace said you were at a checkup the other day?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Uh, if you didn’t want to go to those alone, I could… no, I mean, I guess you wouldn’t want me to…” He turned away again. “I’m really sorry about everything, Azazel.”

  “I know.”

  “Was everything, you know, okay?”

  Actually, I was worried about the way the doctor had reacted to the test. I was going to tell Jason about it, but I hadn’t gotten a chance yet. “The doctor said so. It’s growing, and it has a heartbeat. I got to listen to it.”

  A slow smile broke over his features. “You did?”

  I nodded.

  “So, what did it sound like?” He was eager, intrigued.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, like beating. It was cool, though.”

  “Yeah.” He was really smiling now. “Good.”

  Shit. Jude cared about the baby.

  Well, of course he would care about the baby. It was his baby, for Christ’s sake.

  But man. Fuck Jude.

  Being around him brought this host of negative feelings to the surface. I hated him. I wanted to keep hating him. I wanted to keep blaming him.

  But watching him standing there, being concerned about me and being excited about the baby’s heartbeat?

  Well, I was starting to kind of hate him a little bit less.

  Technically, he’d been as much of a victim as I had of the aphrodisiac. I kept telling myself that he’d really enjoyed what had happened between us. However, I had to admit, he mostly seemed miserable. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t apologized. Over and over again. Even though it wasn’t really his fault.

  I heaved a huge sigh. “I’m supposed to go back in two weeks. If you wanted to come with me, you could.”

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Why would you change your mind about that?”